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Asked: 2026-05-11T03:39:14+00:00

I’m new to grails. I’d like to give it a whirl by implementing a

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I’m new to grails. I’d like to give it a whirl by implementing a new feature or two into an existing Java EE application. The current Java EE app is a fairly standard Spring MVC/Hibernate app running on Tomcat. Looking through the documentation, it looks like I should be able to leverage all of the current business logic that’s written in Java.

I’ve only been able to find tutorials on creating new grails applications. Does anyone know of a tutorial for integrating with an existing Java EE app? If not a tutorial, any recommendations or suggestions on where to start?

Whether or not those features go live would depend on my experience with Grails and if I think it’s worthwhile using it going forward. The goal would to either:

  1. Decide Grails isn’t for me (and not deploy grails).
  2. Decide it is for me, and all future development on this app would be in Grails with a full eventual port over.
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  1. I’m afraid I don’t know of any such tutorials, but my immediate thought would be that porting an application while also combined with learning Grails could be a big uphill.

    I haven’t done this sort of thing before, so these are just musings on how I might approach doing this..

    Since GSPs are not analogous to JSPs and since Controllers in Java are statically typed, whereas Grails controllers have magic methods wired onto them, I would probably want to re-write those again in Grails from scratch since their transferability isn’t obvious – the logic should transfer but the boilerplate of the old code isn’t altogether necessary for the most part.

    Maybe take a simple story/feature, keep the existing Services it uses and get them wired in via Spring in Grails. Then try making one for one copies of what you have in Java with corresponding Controller/GSP and Domains. That should give you some feel of what stuff you need to get off the ground for the port.

    Your biggest struggle, from people who I have heard of doing this, might well be trying to re-use your existing hibernate stuff in Grails.

    Just my tuppence, not so much a whole answer…

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